


Tony Stark's Guide to Altruism

by keire_ke



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Dolphins, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 20:47:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2595905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keire_ke/pseuds/keire_ke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Bucky gets dolphin assisted therapy, Tony muses on the nature of altruism and Steve breaks a great many things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tony Stark's Guide to Altruism

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by the lovely [Nyxira](http://nyxira.tumblr.com/). <3 Thank you so much! Originally written for a prompt by [trobador](http://trobador.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr. :)

On the eighth day God probably decided the newborn earth was boring and said, "let there be a Stark," and that's how Tony's ancestors came into being. Tony likes the thought enough to share it with Barnes, who gives him a look and returns to his attractive brooding over Dostoyevsky, as he's wont to whenever Capsicle is away on vacation. Who wouldn't take a break from this charming fellow, Tony wonders, and returns to ogling the miracle of engineering Cap's favorite hobo's got grafted to his torso.

He starts his every morning praying that Barnes agrees to therapy so that he can finally get a real look at that thing. He's not blind, hot damn. It has pressure-sensors and probably temperature sensors, and yeah, fine, he knows HYDRA made it, which is actually for the best: it means he can piss on their patents and steal the whole thing.

Well, the blueprints, anyway. Barnes might kill him with his pinkie if he tried taking it off, and Rogers… Yeah, Rogers would stare at him with the eyes of a wounded gazelle and then he'd skin him with the utmost care, reveling in the screams. Or worse.

"Hey, how about a zoo?" Tony asks in a fit of inspiration.

Barnes lifts his shaggy head and blinks the Cyrillic from his eyes. "Zoo?"

"Yeah, come on, it'll be fun. Animals make for good therapy. I'm normally not into this touchy-feely crap, I honestly don't know what's up with all of the internet, but after I kinda got this arc reactor installed in the middle of my chest Pepper took me out to lie on a pile of Corgis. And that helped."

"We tried that."

"Technically yes, but no one thought petting Barton's furry marshmallow is gonna fix you or nothing. Now a bear, that just might. Bears are hardcore." Tony has a theory there. See, he's basically like a Corgi, right? He's small, fluffy and the internet worships him. Also the pet of choice for heads of state or a major corporation. Barton is a shaggy, adorable slacker that only really comes alive when he absolutely needs to, just like that mutt of his. Barnes, on the other hand, hibernates a lot and kills people who come too close to his babies, ergo what he needs to hug to get better is a grizzly. Tony opens his mouth to say as much, but Barnes beats him to the punch.

"I killed a bear once," he says, frowning.

Tony, to his credit, only gapes for five seconds, tops. "See, this is why no one invites you to parties. You gotta learn social skills, okay? You gotta learn to let people win a fun story contest."

Barnes shrugs and turns a page with his gleaming metal thumb. Tony maybe gets a bit of a hard-on in his brain, because oh god, Barnes' not even thinking about it and the fingers twitch, there's an active neural link there.

"But hey, I'm a good pal. What happened after you killed the bear?" Tony continues, because he graduated Sam Wilson's Ten Minute Supersoldier Therapy for Dummies. Barnes volunteered information, so step two is asking innocuous questions. This was covered in minute three.

"I ate it."

"I don't know what I was expecting." Tony scratches the back of his head. "Was it tasty? I had like, a panda probably. Or unicorn, who knows what they serve at the $10,000 buffets. I hope it was a unicorn, at least. My life needs magic in it."

"It was poorly cooked."

"You mean you went out bear-killing without an oven? Heathen."

"Roasted it over a fire."

"Didn't they feed you? I'd think they'd wanna feed you, I mean, no offence, but if I treated my armor like that, I think Jarvis would lock up the tower and run away to Silicon Valley."

"Dum-E's still with you, do you're doing something right," Barnes says, bestowing a rare eye-twinkle on Tony's objectively very deserving self.

"I'll have you know I give him oil-baths every other week. He thanks his maker." This of course sails right over Barnes' depressing knowledge of cultural landmarks, not that the bar is set high, but they are getting places nonetheless, so Tony picks up a screwdriver to fiddle with and asks, "So, how did a bear end up a threat to HYDRA, did it steal one too many picnic baskets?"

"There was a glitch in the wipe. I—ran." Barnes stares at the wall, eyes unfocused.

Tony stares at him, not impatient-like, but he's been told his listening face tends to make people want to speak faster and then shut up. He's not doing it on purpose, but hell. It's bad enough that he got upstaged, that's cool, his middle name is magnanimity and his story _was_ weak in comparison. He can deal, but the bigger issue is that Barnes is seriously harshing the buzz Tony always gets from a cool story. Which, hello, Tony gets that decades of freezer burn and microwaving might damage a dude, not to mention the whole programming thing, and torture – he's a world-class expert on torture, thank you very much! – that's also bad, but hot damn, get over it already, am I right? Tony stares at the same wall, hoping for Pepper to arrive and back him up. Alas, she's not due home for another couple of hours. "It was snowing. The whole time. I just remember… whiteness. Everywhere. In my head, too. And the bear."

"Where did the fire come from?" Tony asks, not because he has feelings on the merits of ursal cuisine, but imagining Barnes digging into a mostly raw bear kinda puts a damper on his childhood love affair with his Bucky-Bear. My god that's fucked up, Tony tells himself. I wonder what happened to that poor bear.

Oh right. He put it in the freezer, which was at the time a HYDRA stronghold, with the intention to stage a daring rescue, then got distracted by the merits of cardboard versus aluminum and the pointlessness of shields in general.

Barnes, thankfully unable to read minds, reaches into his pocket, comes up with a bullet, and breaks it open, as one does. The gunpowder piles up in his palm. He sets the book aside and snaps the fingers of his left hand with enough force to generate sparks.

"Now I feel a little stupid. I should have thought of that," Tony says dryly, swallowing the excess of saliva as the wild guesses he's been making shimmer and explode in his head. "So, the zoo?"

Barnes keeps looking at him, like maybe he knows Tony is always only one foot-in-mouth away from asking if he can please get close and personal with his cybernetic arm, pretty please. "Sure," he says eventually, and Tony nearly soils himself in excitement, before remembering: right, right, the zoo.

"Good to win something," he says because he is just that good of a guy, and makes a phone call. It's the kind he usually leaves to Pepper, which is to say smarmy and promising a transfer of several zeros and a random digit in the front, to pay for damages. He's growing as a person, he thinks proudly. He makes those calls before he visits a joint. "Awesome."

It's technically a work day, so the kind people of the Bronx Zoo are willing to entertain Tony's fancies, as much as anyone is ever willing to, that is. He waves aside both Happy and the escort (c'mon, he's got the world's greatest assassin covering his ass!), and pulls Barnes to the bear cage, for shits and giggles. "Hungry?" he asks, which, quite rightfully, earns him a mighty bitchface. "Have it your way."

It's not a total disaster, Tony thinks half an hour later. Barnes gapes openly at the hippos, which are currently being fed, and half a smile crooks his mouth when the monkeys start pointing their fingers at them. The wolf incident raises a few hackles, but that ends swiftly when Barnes kneels in front of the cage, bares his teeth and honest to Thor growls, low enough to rumble the earth in its shoes. The wolf, which's been drying its teeth at them the whole time, wisely closes its maw and retreats. It's just as well, because Tony is torn between tearing off his own clothes and straight up begging to be hit over the head and dragged to a cave, and running the fuck away, with the scales tipping in favor of the caves and dragging and screaming and screaming and some more screaming.

He'd be lying if he tried to pretend the thought of spooning afterwards wasn't a little exciting. Oh god, he's horny, Pepper had better be home when he gets there.

Other than that, however, the zoo is a bit of a drag. It's a cute drag, and Tony wisely took along several packets of dried berries to pass the time, but it's not exciting.

And that's when they get to the dolphin pool. Dolphins are Tony's favorite, so he's been saving them for last, along with the packet of blueberries. He offers one to Barnes as they climb the roof of the dolphinarium, where the pool is open and the stupid fish can laugh at the sky.

"Oh look, they remember me!" Tony says when the stupid fish breach the water and approach, cackling insanely.

Barnes actually fucking smiles. Tony is floored for about a fraction of a second, because hot damn. Rogers looks like he might put Abercrombie out of business if he ever got into modelling, and the brooding hobo look Barnes is sporting is something else, but when he smiles it's like the sun comes out. Who knew the past was filled with attractive people.

"Shame it's so cold," Tony says with a sigh as Mr. Congeniality kneels on the edge of the water and gently touches the dolphin's forehead, to the latter's delight. "I have an agreement with the zoo: they don't sue me if I jump into the pool."

Barnes blinks up at him, still smiling, while a dolphin pokes his right palm with its nose. "That's allowed?"

"I wouldn't know about allowed," Tony says. "I'm bad with being allowed to do things. I generally just do them and then I throw money at people who yell at me until they go away. Never failed me in the past. At least until Pepper started yelling at me."

Barnes looks a little disappointed, especially when the dolphin heaves itself out of the water and starts flailing on the concrete, begging for a belly-rub.

"Theoretically it's not allowed," someone says behind Tony's back, and it's startling enough that Tony jumps and nearly slides into the pool himself. "Sorry." The tiny woman in charge of the dolphinarium grins at him. "As I said, theoretically. Allowances for Mr. Stark can be made."

"See?" Tony straightens proudly.

"If you'd like to follow me inside, there's a portion of the pool that's heated," she tells Tony. "We don't usually see you here outside of summer, sir, but we like to plan ahead." Tony's basically grinning insanely, because score. Of course, when he turns to wave Barnes along all he sees is a neatly folded hoodie and black, skinny jeans that are all the rage for ex-Russian assassins, next to a pair of sneakers. Barnes himself is, presumably, the dark shape underwater, being towed by an overenthusiastic fish.

"He's not really into heat," Tony hastens to explain to the gaping zoo employee. "It's this weird quirk he has. Sorry."

"Um," she says. "Is he going to be okay?"

"Fuck me if I know," Tony says with a sigh. "Oh, you mean right now? Yeah, I wouldn't worry."

The woman is placated enough to leave, and Tony settles against a cozy crook in the wall, munching on his blueberries. Barnes is trying to teach the stupid fish to play tag, it looks like, which means he'll be there awhile.

And he is.

Tony starts worrying ten minutes later, because there's no sign Barnes intends to come up for air, occupied as he is with making nice with the dolphin family, and on one hand he looks like he's having fun, on the other, Tony would really hate it if he had to dive after him. On the bright side, maybe if he saves Barnes' life he'd earn arm-poking privileges? Worth considering. Let it never be said Tony can't make sacrifices for science.

Fifteen minutes after Barnes' last confirmed inhalation Tony fires a quick text to the Star-Spangled Man and pulls up whatever schematics of the arm HYDRA deigned to share online. Three minutes later Barnes breaches the surface, arm around a dolphin. He doesn't seem like he's in dire need of mouth-to-mouth, so Tony only asks, "Everything okay?" cocking his head, but not really expecting anything except a confirmation.

"Yeah," Barnes says, smiling like the god of thunder when faced with a bacon-caramel sundae. "Thanks."

Tony affects a bow by waving his hand over his head, eyes already back on the screen of insufficient size. Of course the arm's water proof, and probably heated internally, too. Heavy, though. Has to be. That Tony can fix, with a little creative alloying.

It's not even half an hour later that he hears rapid footfalls consistent with someone running at a break-neck speed while being pulled by a car. Seconds after that Captain America in all his day-off glory drops out of the sky to land on the concrete right in front of Tony and strikes a pose, outlined by the pale sunlight.

"Hey Cap," Tony says. "You practice that entrance often?"

He is ignored. He'd be miffed, but Rogers drops onto his knees in front of the pool, leather jacket flying to the side before he comes to a complete stop, and he freezes like that, leaning over to peer intently into the cyan waters.

"Bucky!" he cries desperately, and whaddya know, a moment later the man himself springs out of the water, arms wrapping around Rogers' neck and then both of them sink to the bottom with a huge splash.

The forties, Tony decides, were a weird fucking time.

Rogers scrambles back onto the shore, indignant and on the verge of anger, but that lasts only until Barnes surfaces too, with a stupid fish helping to hold his cybernetic arm up, because Barnes is _laughing_. Barnes is fucking laughing. Hot damn. Tony never trusted people who said fish are good for you, but clearly they are on to something.

Rogers's sprawled on the wet concrete, his mouth open and clothes dripping, and then suddenly his whole face lights up, no kidding, like the skies of Nevada on N-bomb test day. "That's how you wanna play it?" he asks, shimmying out of his pants and shoes, both of which are already soaked. Tony doesn't see the point, or wouldn't see the point, if he could get his brain to cooperate. Whaddya know, Captain America owns Iron Man boxer briefs.

Rogers dives into the pool about the same time as another very determined runner makes to the roof of the dolphinarium. He, at least, isn't crazy enough to get near water; he pauses to peer into the pool, but does it from a safe distance, and when it's apparent there's a wild, happy party going on in there, Tony finds himself dragged to his feet and shaken by the lapels of his jacket.

"Never," Sam Wilson tells him, gasping for breath, "ever, send Steve another text message. Oh god."

"Um," Tony says. "You're looking kinda pale there."

"Shut up." Wilson rests his palms on Tony's shoulders and wheezes pathetically. It takes a moment, but he straightens eventually and takes a step back. "Sorry. Sorry. Out of line."

"No big. At least you didn't push me into the pool, which I think even Pepper did once. Everything okay?"

"For the moment, yeah, but I'm pretty sure someone is calling all the police in the neighborhood and we're about to be besieged."

Tony stares at him blankly.

"Steve," Wilson says after another series of deep breaths, "drove his motorcycle on the guardrail for two miles. Then he drove off the overpass and onto a rooftop, then onto an armored van and then onto the road. And I think he's illegally parked by the hippo exhibit." He sinks to the concrete. "Oh blessed ground, I am never leaving you again."

"Ah," Tony says smartly. He swipes the schematics away and looks at messages sent. _Your bf is on the bottom of the Bronx dolphin pool, hasn't breathed in a while_ , the most recent one says. Heh, Freudian slip with the _f_ there. "Oops?"

"Oops? Really?"

"Well, I can see you didn't fall off, so…"

"Is Bucky okay?" Wilson asks, anxiety pouring off him, and hell, it's kinda cute how a guy who thinks intimidating wolves is a twenty-first century past-time inspires the same kind of anxiousness Pepper displays around distressed Corgi puppies.

"He was cackling madly a moment ago, so I'm gonna go with yes. Unless the fish got to him."

"I thought this was a dolphin pool."

"I only have so much brain to store stuff in," Tony tells him haughtily. "If it's living underwater it's a fish." Wilson looks a little scandalized, but what does he know, really. "I take it you're not a dolphin man?"

"I'm a 'stay where it's dry in the middle of October' man," Wilson says, crossing his arms.

"Can't argue with you there."

Cap and his favorite hobo do argue. They argue by playing with the stupid fish for an hour or so, until the zoo employee comes back and explains in a panicked whisper that the entirety of New York is heading their way. Tony, wisely, declares a tactical retreat and the four of them sneak out over the zoo wall, reigniting Tony's already torrid love affair with Barnes' arm in the process, because the wall is twelve-feet tall, and while Rogers merely hops onto it, he and Wilson are in serious danger of using the gates, until Barnes casually offers a leg up. Of sorts.

"I'm not going to drop you," he says seriously, looking up from a crouch, and stares until Tony steps on his hand, at which point Barnes just fucking straightens while stretching his arm over his head and all of sudden Tony is looking over the twelve-foot wall. Rogers offers a hand and, after Wilson gets a similar boost and Barnes casually takes a vault and drops to the other side, they get down in reverse order.

Okay, Tony is definitely pulling some strings, lest he die of scientific equivalent of blue balls.

It's actually less of a hassle to take the subway from where they end up. Who'd have known that two soaking wet and smoking hot national monuments would be practically invisible underground? Not Tony, that's for damn sure. He should take the subway more often, it looks like, though perhaps next time without Rogers and Barnes fighting over who wouldn't get to wear Rogers' warm and dry leather jacket.

"Steve, shut up already," Barnes says eventually, left palm achieving just that. "I dragged you into the pool in the first place. Take the stupid jacket, I have dry shoes."

Thank god the whole display is basically one long PDA, or else the whole car would be staring at the two dripping-wet grown-ass men who kick up a fuss over the possibility of catching a cold, at worst. Tony stares at the ceiling instead, and thinks about Jarvis, and he knows Wilson is doing the same. Except possibly thinking about Jarvis, because that's Tony's thing.

No one stops them when they get off and no one stops them when they get into the tower through the garage, which makes the excursion a resounding success overall. Tony is busy patting himself on the back, until the elevator pings and spits them out on the common floor, where Romanoff and Barton are giggling helplessly over a couple of beers and Bruce gently hovers over a despairing Pepper.

"Hi, honey," Tony says, spreading his arms wide. "Did you have a good trip?"

"The welcome was unpleasant," she says dryly, but because she is Pepper and Pepper is code for human perfection she rises from the couch and comes over to give Tony his welcome home kiss.

"Steve broke Twitter. Again," Romanoff offers and takes a swig of beer. "Fox News caught up with Pepper at the door. It wasn't pretty."

Tony's about to start arguing there's no way that's his fault, not this time, but Rogers' ears are decidedly pinker than they should be, and that's not something he ever gets tired of seeing. "What, just because the world saw his Iron Man undies? I think they're cute! I okayed the design! Pepper okayed the design!"

Romanoff sniggers, but gets off the couch with a tablet in her hand. "See for yourself."

Wilson is hovering over his shoulder as they stare at the display, while Rogers and Barnes silently inch out of the room, and wow, he can see why. "Son of a bitch," Tony says, admiring the slightly blurry photo of a grinning fish, which almost, but not quite, obscures the thorough liplock Rogers's got on Barnes.

"#CaptainAmerica visits Bronx Zoo. #notjustladyliberty," Wilson reads out loud and bursts into laughter.

"There goes my _Times_ cover this month," Pepper says, but she's laughing too, and Tony—well. Not like he's gonna complain he's getting upstaged in the media clusterfuck department. His middle name is magnanimity, after all.

THE END


End file.
